In which Louis considers leaving the firm for a judgeship, Harvey battles with Faye, Katrina breaks in a new associate, and Alex invites Sam home for dinner.
Still smarting after his demotion from managing partner, Louis is intrigued when his friend Saul, a judge, offers him a judgeship (is that how judge hiring works?) on a kind of now or never basis, seeing as Faye may destroy Louis’s reputation any day now. Louis says no because judges make way less money than lawyers, and he can’t leave his law partners, they’re family. He does, however, indulge in a full-on courtroom dream sequence, wherein he refers to Faye as Mrs. Pooperson, and bests her as judge and litigator, the icing on the cake being that a jury of Harveys recommends the death penalty, and Donna declares Louis to be better than Harvey.
Louis reconsiders the judgeship when he thinks that Harvey and Donna are conspiring against and mocking him while out on a dinner date, because he sees Donna hit the decline button on her phone when he calls her from inside the restaurant (as one does, when in jealous stalker mode).
He goes to Harvey in a huff to resign. Harvey explains that Harvey and Donna were just trying not to talk about work. For the sake of a joke, the show writers make Harvey unfamiliar with the expression “tilting at windmills,” which Louis thinks originated with the musical Man of La Mancha, but which Harvard grad Harvey would know comes from the musical’s source material, the novel Don Quixote. Okay, it was a little bit funny to see Harvey refer to windmills as wind chimes. Donna atones for ignoring Louis by coming over to his house for a girls’ night.
Alex and Sam decide to work together to get rid of Faye the ‘right’ (that is, legal, ethical) way. Sam immediately suggests something shady, Alex refuses to cooperate, and Sam calls him a coward, which pisses him off. Later, Sam apologizes, and Alex invites her over for a family dinner with his wife and teenage daughter Joy (whom Sam knows from last season). Some bickering at the dinner between Alex, his wife and Joy about a scrape on the car (and more mentions of tap dancing!) makes Sam realize how much she misses having a family, so she acquires a story line for the remainder of the season – she’ll seek out her biological parents. As if that will go well.
Faye asks Donna to do her secretarial work (sick burn, Faye!). Gretchen covers when Donna goes for dinner with Harvey, and Faye decides to keep Gretchen for a while. Harvey decides to wreak vengeance on Faye for these secretary-robbing moves by getting some guy named Dan, CEO of some company called Sensatech, to hire him as a lawyer, then suing Faye’s former law firm for unethical behaviour WRT to Sensatech, something about a board of directors and a takeover.
His plan backfires when the Sensatech board fires Dan, and Faye has a credible explanation for the unethical behaviour charge. Harvey gets Dan rehired by having Mike Ross’s former cellmate (off-camera) buy Sensatech, but Faye thinks she won that skirmish because she won’t give Gretchen back, and he did everything aboveboard for once, so haha on him.
Katrina is working on a Versalife case (do we care about these company names? we do not). A young lawyer named Susan, who had several lines last week in a bullpen scene, wants to become Katrina’s dedicated associate. Katrina finds Susan bright and helpful, but Susan immediately proves herself to be snaky – she uses a family connection to settle the case after Katrina told her not to, then tries to blackmail Katrina into keeping her on by threatening to tell Faye about the flirtation between Katrina and Brian that led to his resignation.
After seeking vague advice on how to handle Snaky Susan from Samantha, Katrina takes Susan to Faye, praises her, and gives her a chance to say something damning about Katrina and Brian kissing in a tree. Susan doesn’t. The lesson taught, Katrina seems willing to take Susan on and teach her how to be both human and a good lawyer, though Susan might not understand what’s wrong with being an ambitious robot. Yeah, yeah, bring back Brian already.
Next week: Faye does not approve of Harvey and Donna’s relationship.
Kim Moritsugu is a Toronto novelist and sometime TV show recapper. Her latest novel The Showrunner, available from your favourite bookseller, is a darkly humourous, suspenseful Hollywood-noir about female ambition inside the TV biz that has been called a “sophisticated, compelling, and surprisingly complex drama,” and has been optioned for development as a TV series.
Check out its book trailer here:
The Hungry Novelist 